Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Gype...not yet

I did a google search for gype, to see if I could find the rules or compile them from all the Original Chestertonian sources. If you type in

"gype chesterton -"Dr. Thursday"" you get about 170 answers.

Paradoxically, if you type in "gype chesterton -"Dr. Thursday" -aaa" you get about 101 answers.

The sites that were excluded when you typed in -aaa were sites that seemed to be lists of all the words there are in alphabetical order.

I also learned that practically the only things you find on google are blogs that mention gype but tell you nothing about it, G.K. Chesterton's autobiography, and Maisie Ward's biography of Chesterton.

Apparently, someone has actually played this game within the last 10 years and it involved water pistols as a form of punishment for the outside version and scrabble letters for the inside version.

It is my personal conclusion that gype is a game for which the rules are to be decided democratically by the players. The idea of the game is absurdity. The game is meant to be adapted to the situation. Apparently, Chesterton's sedentary version was meant to be a visual-spatial strategy game. If you can find, in Chesterton's works, more descriptions of the game then the ones I found, I might try to give you a set of real rules.

It is my personal recommendation that we, as the Innocent-Smith style nation of "The Flying-Ins," form our own official set of rules so that we may play it over the internet or take it to the next convention.

I make a motion that love2learnmom be elected to the position that functions as a moderator (I believe it is called president in parliamentary terms). Of course, such a motion requires votes. Alternatively, love2learnmom, as the blog moderator, could just take the position by decree. Don't think this is tyrannical; G.K. Chesterton said that if there were no sin, heriditary monarchy would be the only legitimate form of government.

I'm afraid your gracious moderator is burdened with too many responsibilities at the moment to play. However, I will try to make some sort of arrangements. I assume you're looking for someone to take some responsibility for our particular game rules?